2 Little Froggies & A Toddler Photo Shoot Gone Awry...

Every night I pretty much have the same routine, I know, sounds boring. But, part of my ritual is to re-check on the girls just before I head off to bed myself. Not that I think they've stopped breathing in those few hours between their bedtime and mine, but I do it simply so I can see their peaceful little faces. Our days seem to fly by, harried and crazed, so peaceful faces seem to be a rarity in the daylight hours.

Anyway, last night, like every night, I tiptoed upstairs quietly to check on both of them...but instead of seeing sleepy faces, I see their cute little bums....high in the air, froggie style...both of them! Now Anna had adopted this style of sleeping as an infant, but abandoned it long ago for a more sprawled out, head on pillow, baby doll under one arm, sippy cup under the other, tummy down look. I honestly can't remember the last time I had seen her in frog position. And Josie, well, she's definitely ms. rolly poley now, but I had yet to see her assume this classic and all popular bum in air, arms tucked underneath position...which, by the way, only small infants and children can do! So if you are over the age of 4, please don't attempt this...you may cause yourself permanent damage. :-) But, on the babies it's just adorable! I thought for a brief moment about grabbing my camera to capture these dual froggies....but my very next thought was of them both awake...and the thought after that was of me having to rock one back to sleep and hear "hold you mommy" for another 30 minutes from the other. So instead I tiptoed out and headed back downstairs to my bottle of wine! :-)

Today was picture day...."yay" (picture me saying that with a frazzled and decidedly sarcastic look on my face). These are days in which, as a mother, you can fret over for months prior. Not necessarily about what they are going to wear, but how might they behave this time? As my sister once put it...'aren't 2 year olds, oh so much fun?' So I started prepping Anna yesterday for this all important photo session (oh please let us just get one good shot of her). And just let me say in advance, there is nothing wrong with bribing a 2 year old! So, last night I let her put on her red tutu (yes, a tutu) that I wanted her to wear today and run around the house. She loved it! She ran around, dancing, singing, falling, twirling...well you get it. The only way I even got it off of her was to tell her that she could wear it tomorrow and WON'T THAT BE SO MUCH FUN??? We also tried to bribe her with an all new cool Ariel (little mermaid) book...seemed like our tactics might work!!

Wrong!!! Let me just say that we were there for almost 2 hours trying to coerce this little 2 year old into letting us take her picture...3 grown adults....3 grown adults that could not reign in her contempt at having her picture taken. But, right before throwing in the towel completely, the bribery Gods fell upon us!! Thank you daddy! Out of no where, Daddy pulls out a bright blue lollipop (that's what happens when you have small children...you just pull stuff out of your pockets that you didn't even know existed)..ha! As soon as she knew that a lollipop was on the line, she was all smiles....sitting nicely and looking cute as ever...and at that point, I didn't even care what she was wearing or what condition her hair was in....she was actually sitting still and looking happy...it was a miracle.

We'll send these images along when we get them!